UK3 
1855A 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


00036721299 


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ADDRESS 


DELIVERED      BEFOSE      THE 


HISTORICAL  SOCIETY 


UNIVERSITY   OF   NORTH-CAROLINA., 
June  6,  1555, 

RT.  REV.  BISHOP  ATKINSON 


Published  by,  and  at  the  request  of  the  Society  ■ 


RALEIGH: 

HOLDEN  &  WILSON,  "STANDARD"  OFFICE 

1855, 


ADDRESS 


Nearly  two  centuries  have  elapsed  since  the  mighty  spirit 
of  Oliver  Cromwell  went  forth  to  its  last  account,  to  receive 
Its  reward  according  to  the  deeds  done  in  the  body ;  and  yet 
mankind  are  almost  as  far  as  ever  from  being  agreed  as  to 
the  true  character  of  that  extraordinary  person,  and  as  to  the 
nature  and  value  of  the  influence  he  exerted  on  the  destinies 
of  our  race. 

Yet,  certainly,  the  events  of  his  life  were  neither  obscure 
nor  ambiguous.  His  deeds  were  not  done  in  a  corner,  but  in 
the  face  of  alarmed  and  admiring  Europe.  His  speeches 
were  uttered  to  listening  senates,  and  at  the  head  of  armies. 
His  letters  have  been  preserved  among  the  most  important 
state  papers  of  great  kingdoms.  Yet,  with  all  this  glare  of 
light  falling  upon  him,  his  moral  and  intellectual  proportions 
seem  still  vague  and  indeterminate. 

By  some  persons  he  is  regarded  not  only  as  a  hero  of  the 
noblest  type,  but  the  purest  of  patriots,  and  scarcely  less  than 
the  most  devout  of  saints.  By  others,  again,  he  is  considered 
as  a  coarse,  vulgar  upstart — possessed,  indeed,  of  uncommon 
abilities,  but  who  owed  his  guilty  elevation  rather  to  the 
favor  of  circumstances,  and  a  remarkable  and  detestable  com- 
bination of  low  cunning  with  unscrupulous  violence,  than  to 
any  marked  superiority  in  courage  or  intellect  over  his  con- 
temporaries. The  last  view  has  been,  until  of  late,  the  most 
generally  received. 

It  was  the  misfortune  of  Cromwell  to  belong  to  a  party 
which  must  be,  on  the  whole,  pronounced  illiterate,  although 
John  Milton  was  a  member  of  it.  It  was  his  fault  or  his 
misfortune  that  he  was  at  the  same  time  disliked  by  the  Re- 
publicans and  abhorred  by  the  Royalists ;  that  by  the  former 
he  was  regarded  as  the  supplanter  of  the  liberties  of  his  coun- 
try— by  the  latter,  as  scarcely  anything  else  than  an  incar- 
nate fiend.  It  was  his  misfortune,  that  the  principal  his- 
torian of  his  era  was  a  man  who  disliked  him  personally  and 


4 

politically,  but  whose  dislike  was  not  so  blind  as  to  make  him 
utterly  insensible  to  the  shining  qualities  of  his  enemy,  and 
whose  wisdom  and  powers  of  language  and  knowledge  of  his 
subject  are  such,  that  his  words  will  never  fall  to  the  ground 
while  the  English  language  subsists.  The  very  candor,  then, 
of  Clarendon,  while  it  has  made  his  portrait  of  Cromwell 
more  life-like,  has  tended  to  secure  the  acceptance  of  the 
darkest  tints  which  he  has  used  as  being  true  to  nature.  On 
the  whole,  if  dead  men  know  and  feel  the  estimate  in  which 
they  are  held  by  their  fellow  creatures  on  earth,  Cromwell 
scarcely  can  have  been  in  Paradise. 

But  latterly,  public  opinion  has  begun  to  be  considerably 
modified.  There  were  some  evidences  of  change  in  the  be- 
ginning of  the  century.  ~No  less  a  statesman  than  Mr.  Fox — 
himself,  withal,  a  descendant  of  Charles  I.,  though  in  a  chan- 
nel'of  which  he  had  no  reason  to  be  proud — ventured  to  say 
of  the  execution  of  that  king,  "  the  act  for  which  Cromwell 
was  most  denounced,  that  there  was  something  in  the  splen- 
dor and  magnanimity  of  it,  which  had  served  to  raise  the 
character  of  the  English  nation  in  the  opinion  of  Europe  in 
general."  But  in  our  own  clay,  Cromwell  has  found  an  advo- 
cate who  does  not  deal  in  faint  praise — who  is  not  affrighted 
by  the  death  of  Charles  nor  the  massacre  at  Tredagh ;  who 
sees  in  his  hero  nothing  but  what  is  right  and  wise,  just  and 
good.  This  is  Carlyle.  It  must  be  admitted  that,  in  rescu- 
ing from  oblivion  the  character  of  Cromwell,  he  has  done  his 
work  well  and  skilfully.  He  passes,  with  a  light  touch,  those 
points  which  would  shock  the  ordinary  feelings  of  humanity 
in  his  hearers,  and  he  brings  out  into  most  vivid  light,  what- 
ever can  affect  the  imagination  or  bias  the  judgment  in  be- 
half of  his  hero.  It  seems,  by  the  bye,  to  be  a  new  and  very 
singular  feature  in  the  literature  of  this  age,  that  so  much  of 
it  is  devoted  to  reversing  the  sentence  which  mankind  have 
pronounced  on  those  men  who  have  been  condemned  as  the 
great  criminals  of  our  race.  Until  very  lately,  when  the 
basest  and  most  noxious  of  demagogues  was  to  be  stigmatiz- 
ed— when  insolence  and  sycophancy,  rashness  and  cowardice, 
vulgar  ambition  and  mean  envy  were  to  be  described  in  one 
word — the  name  of  Cleon  was  used.  But  now,  Mr.  G-rote 
has  undertaken  to  show  that  he  was  one  of  the  martyrs  of  the 


World's  injustice,  and  was  really,  after  all,  a  very  proper  per- 
son. So  lias  it  been  with  Robespierre.  From  that  day  when 
his  ears,  about  to  be  cold  in  death,  were  filled  with  the  ex- 
ulting shouts  of  the  people  of  Paris  rejoicing  in  his  fate  ;  from 
that  day,  when,  on  the  scaffold,  a  woman  from  the  crowd  ex- 
claimed to  him,  "  Murderer,  your  agony  fills  me  with  joy ! 
Descend  to  hell,  covered  with  the  curses  of  every  mother  in 
France  !" — from  that  day,  till  within  these  few  years,  Robes- 
pierre has  been  looked  on,  not  merely  as  indefensible,  but 
beyond  the  pale  of  human  sympathy — so  intensely  a  lover  of 
himself,  as  to  be  an  enemy  of  his  race.  But  Lamartine 
pledges  himself  to  the  world  that  all  this  is  false. 

According  to  him,  Robespierre  perished  the  victim  of  his 
virtues.  Devotion  to  the  people — that  is,  the  oppressed  por- 
tion of  humanity — a  passionate  desire  to  restore  liberty  to  the 
bondmen,  equality  to  the  humble,  fraternity  to  the  human 
race,  supremacy  to  reason — these  were  his  crimes.  He  did, 
indeed,  shed  blood,  but  with  repugnance.  In  the  meantime, 
he  submitted  to  the  most  cruel  humiliations  and  privations  to 
assure  that  victory  to  the  people,  the  fruits  of  which  he  dis- 
dained for  himself.  Such,  we  are  now  told  in  the  most  elo- 
quent language — such  was  really  the  man  whom  the  world' 
has  execrated  as  hypocrite,  tyrant  and  vampire.  "When  men 
of  the  abject  nature  of  these  demagogues — men  great  only  in 
their  wickedness — with  no  fire  of  genius,  no  depth  of  insight, 
incapable  of  any  heroic  purpose,  or  any  act  of  generous  self- 
forgetfulness — when  such  persons  are  exalted  to  the  rank  of 
heroes,  no  wonder  that  a  man  of  consummate  ability,  of  un- 
doubted courage,  of  many  gentle  and  tender,  as  well  as  many 
high  and  noble  traits  of  character,  should  be  almost  deified 
by  an  eccentric  and  impassioned  admirer.  It  is  desirable, 
however,  that  we  should  get  rid  of  all  these  disturbing  in- 
fluences— of  the  bitterness  of  conquered  and  exiled  Claren- 
don, on  the  one  hand,  of  the  all-applauding  enthusiasm  of 
Carlyle,  on  the  other — and  that,  without  any  theory  to  ad- 
vance or  any  passion  to  gratify,  we  should  endeavor  to  do 
justice,  strict  justice,  to  a  man,  to  whom,  as  to  all  other  men. 
justice  and  truth  are  due,  and  who  ought  to  be  impartially 
and  accurately  estimated,  because  he  is  far  from  being  the 
last  of  his  class.    It  requires  no  prophet  to  foresee  that  in  our 


own  or  the  next  generation,  other  Cromwells  will  rise  up  in 
Europe,  perhaps  in  America ;  and  it  is  well  to  investigate, 
beforehand,  the  circumstances  which  produce  them,  and  the 
different  phases  of  character  through  which  they  pass. 

That  Oliver  Cromwell,  then,  was  a  great  man,  must  be  ac- 
knowledged, his  enemies  themselves  being  judges.  Claren- 
don's sentence  on  him  is  worth  giving,  not  only  because  it  is 
the  judgment  of  one  great  man  by  another — his  contempo- 
rary, his  associate  and  his  enemy — but  also  because  it  is  a 
striking  instancy  of  that  singular  power  of  individualizing  the 
figures  of  history  ;  of  painting  a  man  by  words,  so  that  no 
canvass  of  Vandyke  or  Titian  shall  be  more  characteristic  or 
better  remembered ;  a  power  which  Clarendon  possessed  be- 
yond any  historian  of  ancient  or  modern  times,  except  per- 
haps Tacitus. 

Look,  then,  here  at  the  original  picture,  from  which  all  the 
engravings,  so  to  speak,  of  Cromwell  have  been  taken — all 
the  representations  which  have  been  popularly  accredited  in 
histories,  pamphlets,  essays  and  the  like: — " He  was,"  says 
Clarendon,  "  one  of  those  men  whom  their  very  enemies  can- 
not revile,  without  at  the  same  time  praising ;  for  he  never 
could  have  done  half  that  mischief  without  great  parts, 
courage,  industry  and  judgment.  He  mus,t  have  had  a  won- 
derful understanding  in  the  natures  and  humors  of  men,  and 
as  great  address  in  applying  them,  who,  from  a  private  and 
obscure  birth,  (though  of  a  good  family,*)  without  interest  or 
estate,  alliance  or  friendship,  could  raise  himself  to  such  a 
height,  and  compound  and  knead  such  opposite  and  con- 
tradictory tempers,  humors  and  interests  into  a  consistence 
that  contributed  to  his  designs  and  to  their  destruction,  whilst 
himself  grew  insensibly  powerful  enough  to  cut  off  those  by 
whom  he  climbed,  in  the  instant  that  they  projected  to  de- 
molish their  own  building.  What  Yellerius  Paterculus  said 
of  China,  may  very  justly  be  said  of  him :  that  he  dared 
what  no  good  man  would  have  dared,  and  that  he  accom- 
plished what  none  but  the  bravest  could  have  accomplished. 
"Without  doubt,  no  man  with  more  wickedness  ever  at- 
tempted anything,  or  brought  to  pass  what  he  desired  more 

*  Cromwell  was  a  cousiu,  though  a  far-off  one,  of  Charles  I.  himself— hia  mother 
having  been  a  Stewart,  descended  from  the  royal  family  of  Scotland. 


wickedly — more  in  the  face  and  contempt  of  religion  and 
moral  honesty  ;  yet,  wickedness  as  great  as  his  conld  never 
have  accomplished  those  trophies  without  the  assistance  of  a 
great  spirit  and  admirable  circumspection  and  sagacity,  and 
a  most  magnanimous  resolution. 

"  When  he  appeared  first  in  the  Parliament,  he  seemed  to 
have  a  person  in  no  degree  gracious ;  no  ornament  of  dis- 
course ;  none  of  those  talents  which  used  to  reconcile  the  af- 
fections of  the  stander-by :  yet,  as  he  grew  into  place  and 
authority,  his  parts  seemed  to  be  raised,  as  if  he  had  conceal- 
ed faculties  until  he  had  occasion  to  use  them ;  and  when  he 
was  to  act  the  part  of  a  great  man,  he  did  it  without  any  in- 
decency, notwithstanding  the  want  of  custom.  After  he  was 
confirmed  and  invested  Protector,  by  the  humble  petition 
and  advice,  he  consulted  with  very  few  upon  any  occasion  of 
importance,  nor  communicated  any  enterprize  he  resolved 
upon,  with  more  than  those  who  were  to  have  principal  parts 
in  the  execution  of  it,  nor  with  them  sooner  than  was  abso- 
lutely necessary.  "What  he  once  resolved,  in  which  he  was 
not  rash,  he  would  not  be  dissuaded  from,  nor  endure  any 
contradiction  of  his  power  and  authority,  but  extorted  obedi- 
ence from  them  who  were  not  willing  to  yield  it."  Claren- 
don then  mentions  an  instance,  in  which  he  imprisoned  a 
man  who  refused  to  pay  a  tax  that  he  had  laid  upon  the  city : 
and  when  Maynard,  an  eminent  lawyer,  of  counsel  for  the 
prisoner,  demanded  of  the  Court  of  King's  Bench  to  set  him 
at  liberty,  because  of  the  illegality  of  the  imprisonment,  the 
Protector  sent  Maynard  himself  to  the  Tower,  and  severely 
rebuked  the  judges  for  entertaining  the  question — demanding 
of  them,  who  made  them  judges,  or  whether  they  had  any 
authority  to  sit  there  but  what  he  gave  them?  and  dismissed 
them  with  the  caution,  that  they  should  not  suffer  the  law- 
yers to  prate  what  it  would  not  become  them  to  hear.  Thus 
lie  subdued  a  spirit  that  had  been  often  troublesome  to  the 
most  sovereign  power,  and  made  Westminster  Hall  as  obedi- 
ent and  subservient  to  his  commands,  as  any  of  the  rest  of  his 
quarters.  In  all  other  matters  which  did  not  concern  the 
life  of  his  jurisdiction,  he  seemed  to  have  great  reverence  for 
the  law — rarely  interposing  between  party  and  party. 

As  he  proceeded  with  this  kind  of  indignation  and  haughti- 


8 

ness  with  those  who  were  refractory  and  dared  to  contend 
with  his  greatness,  so  towards  all  those  who  complied  with 
his  good  pleasure  and  courted  his  protection,  he  used  a 
wonderful  civility,  generosity  and  honesty. 

To  reduce  three  nations  which  perfectly  hated  him  to  an 
entire  obedience  to  his  dictates;  to  awe  and  govern  those 
nations  by  an  army  that  was  undevoted  to  him  and  wished 
his  ruin,  was  an  instance  of  a  very  prodigious  address.  But 
his  greatness  at  home  was  but  a  shadow  of  the  glory  he  had 
abroad.  It  was  hard  to  discover  which  feared  him  most — 
France,  Spain  or  the  Low  Countries — where  his  friendship 
was  current  at  the  value  he  himself  put  upon  it.  As  they 
did  all  sacrifice  their  honor  and  their  interest  to  his  pleasure, 
so  there  was  nothing  which  he  could  have  demanded  that 
either  of  them  would  have  denied  him.  To  manifest  which, 
two  instances  are  given  by  Clarendon.  One  is  that  so  well 
known,  of  the  "Waldenses,  whose  prince,  the  Duke  of  Savoy, 
had  determined  upon  their  extirpation.  These,  "whose 
moans  the  vales  redoubled  to  the  hills,  and  they  to  Heaven," 
touched  the  heart  of  Cromwell  with  pity  and  with  indigna- 
tion. He  sent  an  agent  at  once  to  the  Duke  of  Savoy — a 
prince  with  whom  he  had  no  correspondence  nor  commerce — 
to  demand  a  cessation  of  the  persecution ;  and  so  engaged 
Cardinal  Mozaine,  and  even  terrified  the  Pope  himself — be- 
ing accustomed  to  say  that  his  ships  should  visit  Civita  Vec- 
chia,  and  the  sound  of  his  cannon  be  heard  in  Rome — that 
the  Duke  of  Savoy  restored  to  his  protestant  subjects  all  he 
had  taken  from  them,  and  renewed  their  privileges  that  they 
had  forfeited.  In  the  other  instance,  his  authority  was  yet 
greater  and  more  incredible.  The  Protestants  in  the  city  of 
Nismes,  in  France,  on  occasion  of  a  disputed  election,  had, 
without  warning,  fired  upon  the  dignataries  of  the  Poman 
Catholic  Church  and  the  magistrates  of  the  town,  and  killed 
several  of  them.  The  French  Court  was  glad  of  this  outrage, 
as  it  was  thereby  furnished  with  a  justification  for  what  it 
wished  to  do — that  is,  strike  a  heavy  blow  against  the  reform- 
ed religion  in  that  country — meaning  to  put  to  death  a  num- 
ber of  their  leaders,  pull  down  their  churches  in  that  city,  and 
expel  many  from  their  homes.  The  rioters  submitted  them- 
selves to  the  magistrates,  but  they  could  not  obtain  even  a 


9 

promise  of  mercy.  In  this  extremity  they  sent  to  Cromwell 
for  protection  ;  and  their  messenger  made  the  utmost  haste. 
Cromwell  having  heard  his  account,  told  him  to  refresh  him- 
self after  so  long  a  journey,  and  that  he  would  take  such  care 
of  his  business,  that  by  the  time  he  reached  Paris  on  his  re- 
turn, he  would  find  it  dispatched.  And  this  was  verified : 
for  when  the  messenger  came  to  Paris,  he  found  that  an  or- 
der had  already  been  given  to  stop  the  troops  which  were  on 
their  march  to  the  offending  city ;  and  in  a  few  days  a  full  par- 
don and  amnesty  were  given  under  the  great  seal  of  France. 
He  never  suffered  Cardinal  Mozaine  to  deny  him  anything : 
and  the  poor  man  complained  that  he  knew  not  how  to  be- 
have himself ;  for  if  he  undertook  to  punish  the  Protestants, 
Cromwell  threatened  him ;  and  if  he  showed  them  favor,  he 
was  accounted  at  Pome  a  heretic. 

With  all  this  force  of  character,  he  was  not  a  man  of  blood. 
Constant  efforts  were  made  to  assassinate  him ;  and  he  was 
importuned  by  his  officers  to  permit  a  general  massacre  of 
the  Po#yal  party,  but  he  would  never  consent.  In  short,  says 
Clarendon,  somewhat  inconsistently,  after  such  a  recital,  "  as 
he  had  all  the  wickedness  against  which  damnation  is  de- 
nounced and  for  which  hell-fire  is  prepared,  so  he  had  some 
virtues  which  have  caused  the  memory  of  some  men  in  all 
ages  to  be  celebrated,  and  he  will  be  looked  on  by  posterity 
as  a  brave  bad  man."  This,  then,  was  beyond  ail  question  a 
great  man.  Out  of  the  mouth  of  the  enemies  who  hated  him 
most,,  we  have  the  strongest  testimony. 

He  was  no  braggart  like  Cleon,  no  declaimer  like  Itobes- 
pierre ;  but  a  man  of  admirable  sagacity,  of  the  clearest  in- 
sight into  human  nature  and  personal  character,  of  the  sound- 
est judgment,  and  a  courage  so  unblenching,  a  resolution  so 
magnanimous,  that,  in  this  respect,  none  of  Plutarch's  heroes, 
no  knight  in  the  most  brilliant  age  of  chivalry,  has  ever, ex- 
celled him.  He  was,  says  one  of  the  contemporaries,  a  strong 
man.  In  the  dark  perils  of  war,  in  the  high  places  of  the 
field,  hope  shone  in  him  like  a  pillar  of  fire,  when  it  had 
gone  out  in  all  others.  But  great  men  have  their  gradations. 
There  are  those  who  tower  above  their  competitors,  as  Mont 
Blanc  lifts  itself  above  the  other  Alpine  heights.  There  are 
a  few  whose  names  we  instinctively  recall  when  we  think  of 


10 

transcendent  ability.  They  are  such  as  Alexander,  as  Cresar, 
as  Napoleon.  No  man  thinks  of  putting  them  on  the  same 
level  with  ordinary  conquerors  or  statesmen.  Beasidas  was 
a  great  man,  but  he  was  not  Alexander ;  Scipio  was  a  great 
man,  but  he  was  not  Ca?sar ;  Ney  and  Massena  were  great 
men,  but  they  were  fit  only  to  be  the  marshals  of  Napoleon. 
And  this,  I  think,  will  be  seen  to  be  a  characteristic  of  these 
stars  of  the  first  magnitude,  that  their  light  shines  on  the 
whole  sphere  of  human  thought.  It  is  not  this  or  that  work 
which  they  are  competent  to  do ;  but  whatever  (it  be  that  is 
most  difficult  to  man,  and  yet  possible,  these  men  show  them- 
selves competent  to  effect,  when  the  occasion  presents  itself. 
Think,  e.  g.,  of  Alexander — of  that  man  dying  before  he  was 
thirty-two,  yet,  having  not  only  won  the  most  marvellous 
victories  that  history  records,  but  effected  conquests  as  dura- 
ble as  they  were  extensive — yet  finding  time  to  master  the 
philosophy  and  literature  of  Greece ;  and  while  borne  along 
in  the  whirlwind  of  victory,  still  capable  of  discerning,  with 
the  prophetic  eye  of  genius,  the  spot  best  suited  to  establish 
a  city  worthy  to  bear  his  name — a  city  whose  position  was 
selected  with  such  wisdom  that  no  revolution  could  overthrow 
it,  no  extremity  of  war,  no  vicissitudes  of  commerce,  no- 
changes  of  dynasty,  no  successions  of  religion,  no  extirpa- 
tions even  of  races  of  men  have  prevented  it  from  continu- 
ing, for  more  than  2,000  years,  one  of  the  leading  cities  of  the 
world.  Till  his  day,  Greece  was  a  corner  of  Europe ;  after 
his  day,  Greece  overspread  the  world — in  its  language,  its 
literature,  its  colonies,  its  kingdoms,  its  moral  and  even  its 
political  ascendency. 

The  intellect  of  Alexander,  then,  was  wide  and  various  like 
the  empire  he  established.  Still  more  certain  is  this  of  Julius 
Csesar,  the  greatest  perhaps  of  all  men.  His  deeds  in  war 
were  but  a  small  part  of  his  achievements.  He  was  an  ora- 
tor whom  only  want  of  time  prevented  from  excelling 
Cicero  :  he  was  a  writer,  whose  mere  notes  of  his  campaigns 
are  among  the  most  valued  monuments  of  history ;  he  was 
the  reformer  of  the  Calendar,  and  for  1,600  years  it  remained 
as  he  had  settled  it.  The  penetration  which  belongs  to  su- 
perior genius ;  its  insight  into  character,  not  only  where  indi- 


11 

viduals  are  the  objects  of  observation,  but  whole  races  of 
men ;  its  power  to  seize  on  what  is  durable  and  distinctive, 
passing  by  what  is  ephemeral  or  what  is  common  to  all  men — 
these  prerogatives  of  great  souls  are  strikingly  indicated  in 
some  remarks  which  Caesar  casually  throws  out,  that  seem, 
also,  in  a  very  memorable  way,  to  illustrate  the  permanence 
of  national  types  of  character.  In  speaking  of  the  Gauls, 
the  ancestors  of  the  modern  French,  he  mentions  that  he 
would  not  communicate  to  them  certain  plans  of  great  im- 
portance which  he  was  revolving,  because  of  their  fickleness 
and  impressibility  of  nature.  "  For,"  he  goes  on  to  say,  "  that 
it  was  their  custom  to  stop  travelers  on  the  road,  however  re- 
luctant these  might  be  to  be  detained,  and  require  them  to 
tell  all  the  news  they  had  heard ;  and  that  the  populace  in 
the  towns  would  gather  around  merchants  from  abroad,  and 
compel  information  from  them  of  the  countries  from  which 
they  came,  and  of  whatever  was  memorable  or  interesting 
that  was  known  in  those  distant  lands. 

"  At  the  same  time  they  were  easily  swayed  by  the  rumors 
which  thus  reached  them,  and,  on  the  strength  of  such  intel- 
ligence, entered  on  the  most  important  designs,  which  they 
would  afterwards  find  it  necessary  to  retrace  up  to  their  very 
first  steps,  because  they  had  been  acting  in  conformity  with 
false  information,  which  had  been  given  them  in  response 
rather  to  their  wishes  than  to  the  facts  of  the  case." 

Could  a  more  vivid  picture  be  drawn  of  modern  France — 
especially  of  that  Paris  which  concentrates  in  itself  not 
merely  the  powers  and  impulses,  but  all  the  distinctive  pecu- 
liarities of  France  ?  The  impressionable,  sympathetic,  impetu- 
ous, inconstant,  daring,  cruel,  frivilous,  licentious,  generous, 
faithless,  inquisitive,  intellectual  Gaul  whom  we  meet  with 
on  the  page  of  Cgesar — that  medley  of  great  faults  and  great 
excellencies — is  the  Frenchman  of  the  League,  of  the  Fronde, 
of  the  Revolution.  What  an  eagle  eye  was  that  which  sees  all 
these  things  while  he  is  marching  at  the  head  of  his  legions 
from  one  battle-field  to  another ;  what  a  genius,  which  grasps 
every  subject,  the  sublimest,  the  most  trivial ;  what  quick- 
ness, which  enables  him  to  dictate  to  his  secretaries  seven  let- 
ters at  a  time,  on  the  most  important  subjects,  shaking  Rome 


12 

from  the  extremity  of  Belgium,  and  in  ten  years  subduing 
Gaul,  the  Rhine  and  the  Ocean  of  the  North  ? 

Alike  in  transcendent  genius,  but  scarcely  equal,  was  Na- 
poleon. It  is  not  his  marvellous  success  in  war  that  places 
him  in  this  grade,  it  is  the  universality  of  his  j)owers ;  it  is 
not  Lodi,  nor  Marengo,  nor  the  Pyramids,  nor  Austerlitz 
alone ;  but  that  Code  Napoleon,  so  wise  and  just,  and  so 
adapted  to  the  wants  of  men  that  it  has  survived  him  and  his 
Empire,  and  by  it  he  still  rules  among  his  enemies;  it  is  that 
eloquence  by  which  he  spoke  to  the  hearts  of  his  soldiers, 
and  stirred  them  as  by  the  sound  of  a  trumpet ;  it  is  that  pro- 
phetic power  by  which  he  announced,  nearly  forty  years  ago, 
the  present  war  in  Europe,  the  life  and  death  struggle  be- 
tween the  Republican  and  the  Cossack — for  such  in  essence 
it  is.  It  is  wonderful  that  such  a  man  as  either  Cresar  or  Na- 
poleon should  be  born  in  any  country ;  but  how  much  more 
wonderful  that  one  country  should  produce,  even  with  an  in- 
terval of  eighteen  centuries,  these,  in  point  of  genius,  the 
two  foremost  men  of  all  the  earth. 

Nothing,  it  would  seem,  but  the  most  perverse  love  of 
paradox  could  induce  one  to  imagine  that  Oliver  Cromwell 
was  the  superior  of  these  prodigies  of  intellect.  As  a  war- 
rior, he  never  lost  a  battle  ;  as  a  statesman,  he  controlled  the 
diplomacy  of  Europe,  and  he  died  in  his  own  palace — not  in 
exile,  like  Napoleon,  not  under  the  hand  of  assassins,  like 
Cpasar — but  with  every  enemy  prostrate,  and  leaving  his 
mere  name  such  a  terror  to  men,  that  no  one  dared  to  stir  or 
lift  his  hand  against  a  single  disposition  he  had  made  for  six 
months  after  his  bones  were  laid  in  the  earth.  And  it  is  this 
success  which  seems  to  have  fascinated  Carlyle,  who  looks  on 
might  and  right  as  equivalent,  and  has  much  more  faith  in 
trial  by  battle  than  by  jury,  or  parliament,  or  ballot  box,  or 
any  other  human  means.  His  God  is,  in  a  sense  rather  differ- 
ent from  that  of  the  Hebrews,  the  God  of  Hosts.  But,  after 
all,  how  far  did  Cromwell  triumph  ?  He  established  no  dy- 
nasty as  Cresar  did,  and  as  perhaps  even  Napoleon  indirectly 
has  done.  He  could  not  even  frame  a  government  that  would 
work.  He  called  parliament  after  parliament,  and  after  a 
few  weeks  was  obliged  to  dissolve  each  one,  his  object  frus- 
trated.    The  edifice  of  his  personal  power  and  fortunes  fell 


13 

immediately  after  him.  And  we  may  well  ask,  what  endur- 
ing monument  of  any  sort  did  he  leave  ?  There  was  no  im- 
provement in  the  constitution  of  his  country  of  which  he  can 
he  said  to  have  been  the  author.  lie  found  English  law  in  a 
transition  state,  between  feudality  and  the  modern  commer- 
cial equitable  system ;  he  found  it  confused,  incoherent,  dila- 
tory, and  he  left  it  so.  There  is  no  Cromwellian  Code  to  ri- 
val the  Code  Kapoleon,  nor  indeed  any  notable  improvement, 
such  as  was  actually  wrought  afterwards  by  inferior  men  in 
Charles  II. 's  day.  Science  and  literature,  though  like  other 
great  men  he  honored  them  and  wished  them  well,  yet  re- 
ceived no  substantial,  practical  benefit  from  him.  English 
architecture  received  nothing  from  him  but  injuries.  He 
reared  no  monument  in  stone  or  marble  to  the  nation's  great- 
ness or  his  own  glory ;  but  he  permitted  some  of  the  noblest 
which  England  possessed  to  be  mutilated,  which  he  never 
restored.  These  were  the  castles,  and  above  all,  those  ancient 
and  magnificent  cathedrals,  the  most  precious  heir-loom  of 
all  the  national  treasures  that  modern  Eno-land  has  derived 
from  the  ancestral  race,  but  which  to  Cromwell's  soldiers 
were  doubly  odious,  as  refuges  for  their  enemies,  and  as  sym- 
bols of  a  faith  which  they  abhorred.  The  cathedral  at  Car- 
lisle is,  as  I  saw  it  a  few  years  since,  not  yet  restored  from  the 
ruin  brought  on  it  by  the  wanton  violence  of  a  time  when, 

"  Priests  were  from  their  Altars  thrust, 
And  Temples  levelled  to  the  dust, 
And  solemn  rites,  and  awful  forms, 
Foundered  amid  fanatic  storms !" 

Others  suffered  irreparable  damage,  but  scarcely  any  so  much 
as  that  of  Carlisle.  For  this  vandalism,  Cromwell  must  in  a 
great  degree  be  held  responsible,  as  the  leading  man  of  the 
party  which  perpetrated  it,  and  as  having  possessed,  and  yet 
never  exercised,  the  power  to  repair  its  consequences.  In- 
deed, except  music,  of  which  he  was  passionately  fond,  he 
seems  to  have  felt  and  cherished  a  thoroughly  puritanical 
contempt  and  repugnance  for  all  the  fine  arts. 

In  this  respect,  as  in  many  others,  how  unworthy  is  he  to 
be  compared  with  those  myriad-minded  men,  who  knew  not 
only  how  to  fight  and  how  to  treat,  but  how  to  adorn  fife — ■ 


14 

how  to  address  the  souls  of  their  fellow-men  for  centuries, 
through  solemn  and  august  works  which  strike  upon  the  im- 
agination and  the  heart  through  the  senses.  Such  were  the 
temples  and  amphitheatres  that  Csesar  planned.  Such  were 
the  columns  and  arches  and  public  edifices  that  Napoleon 
constructed.  How  inferior,  too,  was  he  to  these  men  in  rich- 
ness and  brilliancy  of  mind?  His  oratory  was  impressive, 
from  his  entrance  into  the  House  of  Commons,  because  he 
always  spoke  with  great  good  sense,  and  with  fiery  earnest- 
ness ;  but  it  is  uncouth,  prolix,  involved,  and  to  a  reader  even 
wearisome,  having  scarcely  a  gleam  in  thought  or  language 
of  that  lightning  power  of  genius  by  which  Caesar  and  Na- 
poleon transfixed  the  hearts  of  men.  And  often  all  the 
greatness  of  Cromwell,  in  his  own  departments,  war  and  gov- 
vernment,  though  real  and  intrinsic,  has  appeared  much  more 
striking,  because  of  the  mediocrity  of  most  of  those  by  whom 
he  was  surrounded. 

Fairfax  was  the  only  one  of  the  parliamentary  Generals, 
besides  Cromwell  himself,  who  seems  to  have  had  much  tal- 
ent ;  and  he  lacked  energy  and  decision  ;  while  of  the  Roy- 
alists, Prince  Rupert  did  as  much  to  ruin  his  uncle's  cause, 
as  if  he  had  been  bribed  by  his  enemies ;  while  Ormond 
and  Capell  and  Hapton  and  Astley,  were  merely  sensible,  gal- 
lant gentlemen.  Had  Montrose,  indeed,  instead  of  leading  a 
few  wild  Highlanders,  been  at  the  head  of  an  army  like  that 
which  fought  on  the  king's  side  at  Marston  Moor  or  Naseby, 
and  the  issue  been  the  same,  then  it  would  have  been  impos- 
sible to  deny  that  his  conqueror  was  one  of  the  greatest  cap- 
tains the  world  has  ever  seen.  As  it  is,  we  only  know  that 
no  equal  ever  faced  him.  He  was  not  less  fortunate  in  the 
period  when  he  began  to  interfere  in  the  affairs  of  the  conti- 
nent. The  Thirty  Years'  War  was  just  closed,  and  Germany 
lay  faint  and  bleeding  from  innumerable  wounds.  Spain, 
paralyzed  by  her  Church  and  by  her  government,  forbidden 
by  the  Inquisition  to  think,  and  thereby  losing  the  Arery  pow- 
er of  thought,  stript  of  her  former  political  liberties,  ruled  by 
kings  so  weak  and  incapable  that  they  were  notoriously  under 
subjection  to  favorites  scarcely  superior  in  mind  and  energy 
to  themselves — Spain  was  rapidly  sinking  to  its  present  state 
of  helplessness  and  degradation,  and  presented  its  unwieldy 


15 

bulk  to  an  active  assailant,  as  the  whale  rolls  before  the  har- 
pooner,  with  a  vast  surface  to  wound,  with  immense  riches  to 
spoil,  and  with  no  skill  or  power  of  defence  to  repel.  France, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  full  of  youthful  vigor ;  but  fortunately 
for  Cromwell's  ascendency,  Richelieu  was  dead,  Louis  X1Y. 
was  a  minor.  It  was  in  the  interregnum  between  those  two 
great  rulers,  that  he  carried  matters  with  so  high  a  hand  over 
that  proud  country.  Cardinal  Mozaine,  a  cunning,  timid 
man,  and  doubly  hateful  to  the  nation  he  governed,  as  not 
only  a  foreigner,  but  an  Italian,  a  countryman  of  Catherine 
DeMedicis,  was  then  at  the  helm.  The  country  was,  indeed, 
in  a  most  confused  state.  The  great  nobles  levied  war 
against  the  king,  or  fought  for  him,  apparently  to  pass  away 
the  time — changing  sides  in  a  moment  of  pique  or  ill  humor 
with  their  associates,  or  to  gain  a  smile  from  their  mistresses. 
To  a  country  in  this  state  of  disorder,  with  a  ruler  constitu- 
tionally fearful,  Cromwell,  with  his  sagacity,  resolution  and 
military  fame,  had  to  address  himself.  'No  wonder  that  he 
spoke  only  to  be  obeyed.  His  reclamations  in  behalf  of  the 
Protestants  would  not  have  been  listened  to  so  meekly  thirty 
years  before,  when  Richelieu  was  besieging  Eochelle,  nor 
thirty  years  after,  when  Louis  XIV.  was  revoking  the  Edict 
of  Nantz.  He  bestrode  the  world  like  a  collossus,  because 
the  men  around  him  were  pigmies.  On  the  whole,  when  we 
examine  what  he  did,  we  find  that  his  genius  was  rather 
destructive  than  constructive.  He  pulled  down  the  throne, 
but  he  could  not  build  another,  nor  could  he  set  up  a  repub- 
lic ;  he  pulled  down  first  Episcopacy  and  then  Presbyterian- 
ism,  -but  he  had  nothing  definite  to  offer  the  nation  in  their 
stead.  He  gained  no  permanent  concjust  for  his  country  but 
Jamaica,  and  that  rather  by  accident  than  of  purpose ;  he 
made  no  improvement  in  her  economical  or  social  interests ; 
and,  except  the  halo  of  reputation  which  he  shed  around  her 
name  by  his  victories  on  land,  and  by  Blake's  at  sea,  his 
work  for  all  good  purposes  died  with  him.  What  good  he 
frustrated  of  course  no  man  can  tell.  It  is  certainly  possible 
that  but  for  him,  there  might  have  been  an  agreement  be- 
tween the  king  and  people  ;  that  the  Church  might  have  been 
upheld ;  that  society  might  have  escaped  the  absolute  domi- 
nation of  the  Puritans,  and  the  consequent  reaction,  the  dis- 


16 

soluteness  and  profligacy  of  the  Restoration.  Looking  at  the 
issne  of  his  work,  Cromwell  cannot  be  considered  even  as 
a  successful  man ;  and  though  undoubtedly  great,  he  cannot 
be  ranked  with  those  mighty  minds  who  have  regulated  the 
course  of  history,  and  the  fortunes  of  their  entire  race,  and 
left  an  indelible  impress  on  the  institutions  and  even  the 
character  of  mankind.  He  must  be  relegated  to  that  se- 
condary, though  still  very  high  rank  to  which  we  assign  the 
Marlboroughs  and  the  "Wellingtons,  the  Henry  IV.  of  France 
and  the  Frederick  II.  of  Prussia — men  renowned  for  prowess 
in  the  field  and  wisdom  in  the  Cabinet,  but  yet  mere  war- 
riors and  statesmen,  not  those  bright  universal  intelligences, 
who  are  competent  to  win  the  prize  in  any  arena  of  human 
effort.  And  some  such  estimate  of  Cromwell's  intellectual 
proportions  even  his  enemies  were  obliged  to  allow  the  jus- 
tice of.  Self-respect  would  compel  this,  for  he  had  conquered 
them  all,  and  they  would  scarcely  desire  to  have  it  thought 
that  their  superior  was  either  a  coward  or  a  fool.  The  par- 
ticular in  which  they  seem  to  me  to  have  been  least  just  to 
him,  is  in  the  moral  aspect  of  his  character.  I  have  already 
quoted  the  language  of  Clarendon,  that  Cromwell  had  all  the 
wickedness  against  which  damnation  is  denounced,  and  for 
which  hell-fire  is  prepared;  and  Lingard  says  "his  whole 
life  was  made  of  artifice  and  deceit,"  and  yet  these  two  are 
among  the  calmest  of  the  historians  opposed  to  him.  A  great 
and  very  favorable  light  has  however  been  shed  on  his  char- 
acter, since  these  authors  wrote,  by  the  publication  of  his  let- 
ters and  speeches.  In  these  he  speaks  for  himself,  and  we 
see  not  only  his  penetration  and  sagacity,  his  calm  fortitude 
when  the  day  is  darkest  and  the  storm  heaviest,  and  all  the 
other  lofty  elements  of  character,  but  we  see  the  gentleness 
almost  of  a  woman  in  his  intercourse  with  those  he  loves ; 
great  consideration  for  the  helpless ;  warm  domestic  affections, 
and  other  sweet  and  gracious  elements  of  character,  soften- 
ing and  adorning  the  stern  bold  man,  like  flowers  blooming 
on  an  Alpine  cliff.  The  great  question,  however,  concerning 
his  moral  nature,  (for  a  robber  may  be  kind  to  his  wife  and 
loving  to  his  children,)  the  point  on  which  our  whole  esti- 
mate of  his  character  must  depend,  is  this,  was  he  sincere  in 
his  professions  of  patriotism  and  religion  ?    These  professions 


17 

-were  sufficiently  loud  and  obtrusive.  Were  they  the  uncon- 
trolable  expression  of  genuine  feeling,  or  were  they  the  ut- 
terances merely  of  a  remorseless  craft  and  hypocrisy!  It 
would  be  very  easy  to  pronounce  peremptorily  either  way, 
and  to  offer  well  authenticated  facts  in  confirmation  of  either 
view.  But  this  short,  unqualified  way  of  deciding  on  char- 
acter, does  not  suit  the  complexity  of  human  nature,  and 
least  of  all  men  would  it  suit  the  case  of  Oliver  Cromwell — a 
man  of  large  experience  of  life,  deeply  affecting  his  original 
elements  of  character,  and  who,  even  in  these  elements  was 
various,  and  so  to  speak,  many-sided.  The  basis  of  the  man's 
moral  nature,  I  suppose  to  have  been  a  profound  melancholy. 
He  shared  this  temperament  with  some  ether  men  who  have 
most  affected  the  fortunes  of  the  world — with  Mahomet,  with 
Martin  Luther,  with  Dr.  Johnson,  with  some  of  the  ancient 
prophets,  with  some  oi  the  old  saints.  This  temperament, 
inclining  men  to  look  with  scorn  and  indifference  on  the  or- 
dinary objects  of  human  pursuit,  renders  them  more  single- 
minded,  more  energetic,  and  more  uncontrollable  in  effect- 
ing the  objects  they  actually  take  to  heart.  How  can  you 
alarm  a  man  to  whom  life  itself  is  a  weariness,  to  whom  all 
things  appear  flat,  stale,  and  unprofitable  ?  Here,  then,  is  a 
basis  for  magnanimity.  And  at  the  same  time,  how  can  you 
bribe  a  man,  who  sets  no  value  on  any  thing  you  have  to 
offer?  This  melancholy  temperament,  then,  is  allied  to  sin- 
cerity. But  there  is  a  class  of  thoughts  and  interests,  which, 
if  they  be  considered,  cannot  be  despised.  They  are  those 
whigh  relate  to  the  soul,  to  God,  and  to  eternity.  If  we  an- 
alyW  earthly  things,  they  cannot  bear  it,  they  shrink  away, 
they  become  as  nothing.  But  the  deeper  we  search  into,  and- 
the  longer  we  contemplate  those  which  are  eternal,  the  more 
grand  and  vast  do  they  loom  before  the  mind's  eye.  There 
is,  then,  a  natural  affinity  between  a  thoughtful  melancholy 
temperament  and  religious  sensibility  and  earnestness.  The 
tendency  may  be  suppressed  by  intellectual  convictions  unfa- 
vorable to  it,  as  for  example,  in  an  infidel  age ;  and  where 
the  tendency  is  not  checked,  the  religion  may  be  true  or  may 
be  false,  to  which  it  is  directed ;  but,  independently  of  these 
considerations,  it  is  manifest,  on  psychological  grounds,  that 
strong  and  deep  religious  impressions  are  easily  made  on  men 
2 


18 

of  melancholy  temperament,  and  the  incidents  of  history 
strikingly  confirm  the  conclusion  which  would  itself  flow  from 
a  priori  reasoning.  Mahomet  was  such  a  man.-  He  who  sup- 
poses him  to  have  been  a  mere  vulgar  mercenary  impostor, 
like  Tlieudos  of  old,  or  Joe  Smith  in  our  own  day,  does  great- 
ly err.  There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  he  began  with 
the  earnest  purpose  to  Be  what  was  much  needed  at  that 
time,  a  religious  reformer ;  and  it  is  very  probable  that  he 
was  persuaded  that  God  had  sent  him  to  do  that  work.  It 
was  not  begun  till  he  was  past  middle  age,  and  had  become  a 
man  of  wealth  and  social  consideration. 

The  career  on  which  he  entered  was  difficult  and  danger- 
ous, and  of  most  uncertain  issue.  He  had  much  to  lose,  and 
but  little  to  gain,  when  he  arrayed  himself  against  the  super- 
stitions and  idolatries  of  his  people.  No  man  can  reasonably 
explain  his  conduct  but  through  sincere  religious  zeal.  But 
the  point  to  which  I  wish  to  direct  especial  attention  is  this, 
that  he  was  one  of  those  men  who  are  constitutionally  grave 
and  ever  sad ;  that  he  was  indifferent  to  what  most  men 
value,  and  given  to  extreme  and  protracted  meditation  on 
those  great  problems  which  our  spiritual  nature  and  eternal 
destiny  suggest.  He  was,  from  his  youth  up,  a  silent,  serious 
man,  inquisitive  as  to  those  subjects  which  bear  on  the  future 
life. 

At  twelve  years  of  age  he  came  under  the  instruction  of  a 
Nestorian  monk,  who  is  supposed  to  have  clone  much  to  shape 
the  system  of  doctrine  which  he  subsequently  taught.  When 
he  had  acquired  wealth  by  his  maraiage  with  Cadijah,  he 
neglected  his  former  commercial  occupations,  and  gav^pim- 
self  up,  to  a  great  extent,  to  meditation  and  prayer.  The 
babble  of  the  Arabs  about  camels  and  caravans,  and  silks  and 
spices,  and  wars  and  forays,  could  not  interest  a  soul  burning 
with  desire  to  know  itself  and  its  destines,  whence  it  came, 
whither  it  went,  what  its  nature.  To  such  a  soul,  dwelling 
on  thoughts  of  sin,  and  holiness,  and  God,  and  eternity,  the 
worship  and  faith  of  those  around  him,  worship  of  the  black 
stone  at  Mecca  and  of  graven  images,  faith  in  a  multipli- 
city of  gods,  and  in  stars  as  gods,  and  in  images  as  divine  ; 
all  this  seemed  as  a  blasphemous  deceit  and  horrible  impiety. 


19 

Thus  lie  gradually  absented  himself  from  society,  and,  seek- 
ing solitude  in  a  cavern,  would  remain  days  and  nights  to- 
gether wrapt  in  meditation  and  prayer.  There  he  saw  visions 
and  dreamed  dreams.  There  it  was  revealed  to  him  that 
there  was  but  one  God,  and  that  resignation  to  His  will,  was 
the  great,  all-comprehensive  duty  of  man.  There,  it  was  im- 
pressed on  his  mind,  that  he  was  called  to  go  forth  and  teach 
others  what  he  had  himself,  after  many  painful  struggles  and 
anxious  thoughts  of  soul,  thus  learned.  At  first,  it  seems  he 
was  doubtful  of  his  own  mission,  and  needed  to  be  confirmed 
by  the  assurance  of  his  wife-  and  his  friends,  that  he  was  in- 
deed the  prophet  of  God.  I  suppose,  then,  that  his  original 
motives  were  good ;  that  his  first  steps  were  taken  in  all  sin- 
cerity, and  that  his  religion,  in  its  primary  annunciation,  was  a 
great  improvement  on  the  low  idolatry  scarcely  above  Fetich- 
ism  of  his  day  and  country.  That  all  this  was,  in  the 
course  of  time,  changed  very  much  for  the  worse  ;  that  in  a 
certain  sense,  that  is  true  which  is  often  said  of  him,  that  he 
began  a  fanatic  and  ended  a  hypocrite  ;  that  he  became  infu- 
riated by  the  opposition  he  met  with ;  that  he  was  debased 
by  his  struggles,  and  by  his  very  success ;  that  he  gradually 
imbibed  the  spirit  of  a  warrior,  a  conqueror,  and  a  sensual- 
ist ;  and  that  at  length  he  feigned  revelations  to  justify  his 
own  character  and  practices — all  this  seems  to  me  indubita- 
bly certain.  But  such  are  the  weaknesses  and  inconsisten- 
cies of  human  nature,  that  all  this  is  not  irreconcilable  with 
the  belief  that  he  was  originally  sincere  and  earnest  in  his 
religious  aspirations ;  and  I  urge  this  to  show  the  connection 
that -exists  between  deep  religious  sensibility,  and  that  mys- 
terious temperament,  lofty,  melancholy,  ascetic,  which  he 
shared  with  Cromwell  and  many  more  of  the  master-spirits 
of  mankind. 

Martin  Luther  is  another.  In  classing  him,  then,  with 
these  men,  of  course  I  do  not  mean  to  intimate  that  he  was 
like  them  in  all  respects ;  not  more  pure,  not  more  devout, 
lie  was,  in  these  respects,  I  am  greatly  persuaded,  their  su- 
perior; but  he  was  like  them  in  a  melancholy  which  ap- 
proached almost  to  madness,  and  in  a  depth  of  religious  feel- 
ing which  made  him  count  all  the  bribes  and  all  the  terrors 


20 

of  the  world  but  as  the  small  dust  of  the  balance,  compared 
with  the  duty  of  holding  and  maintaining  and  propagating 
his  convictions.  Luther,  it  has  been  well  remarked,  had  a 
mind  intently  self-contemplative  and  profoundly  unquiet, 
which,  except  the  strongest  active  occupations  diverted  it, 
preyed  on  itself — scrutinized  its  own  faith,  feelings,  fears  and 
hopes — pried  into  the  mysteries  of  its  own  nature,  and  pro- 
voked internal  dissatisfactions  and  struggles.  He  speaks  of 
his  great  scenes  of  trial,  as  being  throughout  life,  internal. 
His  agonies,  his  temptations,  his  colloquies  with  himself  or 
with  Satan,  the  tenderest  controversy,  and  the  most  formida- 
ble disputant  were  always  within  him.  He  fasted,  prayed, 
watched  long  and  vigorously.  Often,  when  a  monk,  on  re- 
turning to  his  cell,  he  knelt  at  the  foot  of  the  bed,  and  re- 
mained there  until  day-break.  He  relates  that  once,  for  a 
whole  fortnight,  he  neither  ate,  drank,  nor  slept.  At  the 
foot  of  the  altar,  his  hands  clasped,  his  eyes  full  of  tears,  he 
prayed  for  peace  and  found  none.  One  morning,  the  door  of 
his  cell  not  being  open  as  usual,  the  brethren  became  alarm- 
ed— they  knocked,  and  there  was  no  reply.  The  door  was 
burst  in,  and  brother  Martin  was  found  stretched  on  the 
ground,  in  a  state  of  ecstacy,  scarcely  breathing,  and  well 
nigh  dead.  Is  it  not  easy  to  trace  the  coincidence  between 
these  struggles  and  those  of  Mahomet  in  his  cave,  and  of 
Cromwell,  as  Carlyle  vividly  describes  him,  "  walking  with  a 
heavy  foot-fall  and  many  thoughts  by  the  bank  of  the  dark 
and  slumberous  Ouse,  with  thoughts  not  bounded  by  that  river, 
with  thoughts  that  went  beyond  eternity,  and  a  great  black 
sea  of  things  that  he  had  never  been  able  to  think."  May 
we  not  trace  these  same  struggles  in  all  men  of  whom  we 
know  any  thing,  of  active  minds,  and  at  the  same  time  of 
this  melancholy  temperament,  in  Pascal,  in  Dante,  in  Cow- 
per,  in  Dr.  Johnson — "  fits  of  the  blackness  of  darkness,  with 
glances  of  the  brightness  of  very  Heaven." 

But  these  struggles  do  not  belong  only  to  men  of  this  class, 
who  do  come  to  some  solution,  more  or  less  just,  more  or  less 
satisfactory,  of  the  problems  with  which  they  are  perplexed, 
concerning  the  soul,  and  God  and  eternity ;  they  belong  also 
to  those  to  whom  these  problems  remain  forever  insoluble, 


21 

and  who  sink  into  unbelief  and  Atheism.  They  have  been 
traced  for  us  in  saddest  but  clearest  light,  by  the  pens  of 
Rousseau  and  Byron  and  Shelley,  men  who  yearned  for  knowl- 
edge and  peace,  and  madly  rejecting  that  which  came  to 
them  from  Heaven,  plunged  into  atheistic  despair.  The 
great  bulk  of  mankind  know  but  little  of  these  trials  ;  they 
indeed  feel  difficulties,  for  that  is  inevitable,  but  they  are 
not  much  troubled  by  them,  and  they  readily  accept  of  any 
proffered  solution,  and  become  content.  But  there  is  a  class 
of  minds  naturally  disdainful  of  the  petty  objects  of  life, 
meditative,  inquisitive  concerning  the  future,  reverential, 
scrupulous,  sometimes  morbidly  scrupulous,  to  whom  life  is  a 
burden,  until  they  obtain  some  satisfaction  to  their  question- 
ings concerning  God,  good  and  evil,  the  soul  and  eternity. 
Such  a  man  was  Cromwell.  In  early  life  he  suffered,  they 
sajr,  from  hypochondria.  His  physician  told  Sir  Philip  War- 
wick that  he  had  often  been  sent  for  to  him  at  midnight ;  that 
he  often  thought  he  was  just  about  to  die,  and  had  fancies 
about  the  Town-Cross.  We  are  reminded  of  Luther  throw- 
ing his  inkstand  at  Satan,  whom  he  believed  to  be  bodily  pre- 
sent with  him — of  Dr.  Johnson,  after  his  mother's  death, 
hearing  her  call  hrm- — and  of  other  indications  of  the  per- 
turbed state  of  powerful  souls  wrestling  with  difficulties  and 
temptations.  These  dark  sorrows  and  melancholies  of  Crom- 
well, are  valuable  as  indications  of  his  character.  We  know 
better  to  what  order  of  men  to  assign  him ;  and  it  is  any 
thing  but  a  low  or  base  order.  As  his  admiring  biographer 
says,  the  quantity  of  sorrow  a  man  has,  does  it  not  mean 
withal  the  quantity  of  sympathy  he  has,  the  quantity  of 
faculty  and  victory  he  shall  yet  have?  " Our  sorrow  is  the 
inverted  image  of  our  nobleness."  The  depth  of  our  despair, 
measures  what  capability  and  weight  of  claim  we  have  to 
hope.  Black  smoke  of  Tophet  filling  all  your  universe,  it  yet 
can,  by  true  heart-energy,  become  flame  and  brilliancy  of 
heaven.  At  length  his  soul  found  rest  in  the  disclosures  and 
consolations  of  religion,  and  never  afterwards  was  he  so 
troubled  by  melancholy  imaginations.  Indeed,  the  civil  war 
soon  broke  out,  and  his  active  spirit  was  drawn  away  from  its 
own  internal  conflicts  to  the  embodied  tumults  that  raged 


22 

around  him,  and  amid  the  din  of  battle  and  the  excitement 
of  diplomacy,  while  guiding  with  a  strong  hand  the  car  of 
state,  and  crushing  with  relentless  energy  the  machinations 
of  enemies,  he  had  no  time  to  bestow  on  the  dark  visions  of 
early  life.  Yet  indications  of  the  same  temperament  we  find 
coming  to  the  surface  throughout  all  his  days,  and  among 
those  indications,  I  number  his  coarse  and  unseasonable  jokes. 
As  opposite  colors  are  said  by  modern  science  to  be  compli- 
mentary, one  of  another,  and  as  magnetism  has  its  oppo- 
site poles,  so  a  given  quality  of  character  will  show  itself  by 
two  opposite  classes  of  manifestations.  Fear  is  not  only  cau- 
tious, but  it  is  rash.  Prodigality  is  parsimonious  as  well  as 
profuse,  and  thus  melancholy,  while  it'cannot  be  cheerful,  is 
both  merry  and  sad.  ISTever  perhaps  was  there  a  great  jester 
who  did  not  often  suffer  from  deep  depression.  Where  there 
is  such  violent  action,  there  must  be  corresponding  reaction. 
Thus  the  two  gravest  of  modern  nations,  the  Spaniards  and 
the  English,  have  most  humor.  Shakspeare,  with  his  accus- 
tomed intimate  knowledge  of  human  nature,  introduces  Fal- 
staff  complaining  of  melancholy.  And  the  actual  humorists, 
Sterne  and  Swift,  were  any  thing  but  happy  men  ;  while 
the  solemn  Johnson  would  burst  out  occasionally  into  uncon- 
trollable fits  of  laughter,  and  Luther's  jests  are  as  pungent  as 
his  invectives,  and  his  wit  scarcely  less  famous  than  his  elo- 
quence. 

It  is  thus  we  are  to  understand  Cromwell's  coarse  and  un- 
seasonable jocularity.  It  was  repeatedly  exhibited  when 
events  were  gravest,  and  his  own  feelings  ought  to  have  been 
the  saddest.  Thus  when  he  signed  the  order  for  the  king's 
execution,  he  smeared  with  ink  Henry  Martyr's  face,  who  sat 
by  him,  and  who  immediately  did  the  same  to  him.  Was 
this  exuberance  of  spirits  in  the  very  doing  so  dreadful  a 
deed  ?  Surely  not.  It  was  the  very  tension  of  his  nervous 
system  which  thus  sought  relief.  He  gave  vent  to  his  deep 
emotions  in  buffoonry,  because  he  could  not  suppress  them  ; 
and  to  utter  them  in  suitable  word  or  deed  would  have  been 
discouraging  to  his  followers,  already  anxious  and  shrinking 
from  the  consequences  of  their  own  solemnly  pronounced 
judgment.     On  another  occasion,  he  ends  an  interview  with 


23 

Ludlow,  by  throwing  a  cushion  at  his  head  and  running  down 
stairs — not  a  very  seemly  and  dignified  proceeding  on  the 
part  of  so  great  a  man,  but  done  probably  in  order  to  avoid 
breaking  out  into  that  torrent  of  passion  and  invective  which 
Ludlow's  unyielding  opposition  was  likely  to  urge  him  to. 
On  the  whole,  if  I  have  justly  estimated  Cromwell,  he  be- 
longed by  original  constitution  and  natural  temperament,  to 
a  class  of  men  who,  of  necessity,  are  in  earnest  in  what  they 
undertake,  who  are  not  cheerful  and  happy  in  their  or- 
ganization, who  look  on  the  mysteries  of  the  universe  with  a 
sad  and  unquiet  eye,  who  are  much  occupied  with  these  prob- 
lems, who  are  not  much  attracted  by  the  toys  and  gewgaws 
of  life,  who  do  not  live  for  bread  alone,  but  for  the  truth 
which  they  have  painfully  discovered,  or  suppose  themselves 
to  have  discovered,  and  for  the  right,  which  they  desire  to  see 
established. 

Such  men  must  be  in  earnest.  It  is  not  among  them  that 
you  find  the  quacks  and  impostors  of  the  world,  those  who 
cheat  their  fellow-men  for  a  morsel  of  bread.  Cromwell 
went  forth  to  do  his  work,  sternly  earnest,  believing  he  was 
called  thereto  by  God ;  believing  that  God  would  own  him, 
and  prosper  his  work.  He  had  much  to  surrender  even  to 
set  out  on  his  career.  He  was  past  forty  years  of  age  when 
the  Long  Parliament  began  to  sit — a  time  of  life  when  men 
think  of  rest  rather  than  of  untried  and  arduous  fields  of  la- 
bor. He  had  a  family  which  he  loved  with  an  intensity  of 
affection  which  none  but  strong  natures  like  his  can  feel. 
The  shot  -which  killed  one  of  his  children,  young  Oliver,  who 
fell  in  a  skirmish  with  the  Scots  in  1648,  almost  slew  his  fa- 
ther likewise.  Ten  years  afterwards,  not  long  before  his  last 
illness,  hearing  some  one  read  these  words  from  Phil.  4th  ch., 
11th,  12th,  13th  verses: — "Not  that  I  speak  in  respect  of 
want :  for  I  have  learned  in  whatsoever  state  I  am,  therewith 
to  be  content.  I  know  both  how  to  be  abased,  and  I  know 
how  to  abound :  every  where,  and  in  all  things,  I  am  in- 
structed, both  to  be  full  and  to  be  hungry,  both  to  abound 
and  to  suffer  need.  I  can  do  all  things  through  Christ  which 
strengtheneth  me,"  he  said,  "  This  scripture  did  once  save 
my  life,  when  my  poor  Oliver  died,  which  went  as  a  dagger 


24: 

to  my  heart,  indeed  it  did."  The  death  of  his  favorite  daugh- 
ter Elizabeth,  Lady  Claypole,  which  occurred  not  much  more 
than  a  month  before  his  own,  no  doubt  insured  and  hastened 
the  latter.  A  man  who  thus  cherished  his  children,  as  an 
eagle  her  young,  was  not  likely  to  expose  the  precious  nest 
for  any  selfish  object.  He  went  forth  to  battle  because  he 
believed  God  and  his  country  called  him.  And  certainly 
there  was  much  in  the  state  of  the  country  to  justify  that  be- 
lief. 

Charles  had  been  trained  by  his  father  in  the  principles  of 
arbitrary  government,  and  no  doubt  sincerely  believed  that 
he  was  responsible  to  God  alone  for  any  of  his  acts.  His 
ministers,  Buckingham  and  Strafford,  were  accustomed  to  ex-  . 
ercise  their  powers  in  the  most  haughty  and  oppressive  way. 
The  people,  on  the  other  hand,  felt  the  impulse  to  freedom 
of  thought  and  action  which  the  reformation  had  imparted, 
and  were  conscious  of  increasing  power  resulting  from  rapid- 
ly growing  wealth  and  knowledge.  What  the  constitution 
really  was,  no  one  could  certainly  tell.  There  was  none  writ- 
ten, and  there  were  precedents  on  both  sides  of  every  dis- 
puted question.  Perhaps  a  collision  was  inevitable.  If  im- 
plicit obedience  were  rendered  to  the  king,  the  government 
would  become  a  despotism  like  that  of  Spain  or  Russia.  If 
on  the  other  hand  he  yielded  every  point,  the  monarchy  was 
at  end.  It  is  observable  that  in  the  beginning  of  the  con- 
test, the  opposition  were  so  clearly  in  the  right,  that  in  the 
earlier  part  of  the  long  parliament  there  was  almost  entire 
unanimity  against  the  king,  Lord  Capel  being  the  first  to 
move  a  redress  of  grievances,  and  Clarendon  and  Falkland 
leading  the  party  which  assailed  the  court.  It  must  be  admit- 
ted also,  that  there  was  something  to  justify  Cromwell's  oppo- 
sition to  the  authority  of  the  church  as  it  was  then  exercised, 
for  it  was  not  exercised  either  mercifully  or  wisely. 

Archbishop  Laud  was  a  pure  and  devout  man,  inflexible  in 
his  maintenance  of  the  truth  as  he  held  it,  dying  for  the  church 
like  a  martyr  of  its  best  ages ;:  but  unhappily  not  only  willing 
to  suffer  himself,  but  willing  also  tG^  inflict  suffering  on  others, 
and  insisting  not  only  on  obedience  to  the  faith  in  its  essen- 
tials, but  an  acceptance,  off  the  ritual  in  its  merest  circum- 


25 

stantials.  Ho  was,  in  short,  good  and  able  in  his  way,  but 
imperious  and  narrow-minded.  He  had  not  in  his  intellectual 
vision  sufficient  perspective.  The  little  and  the  great  were 
nearly  equal  in  his  view ;  surplices  and  genuflexions  were 
scarcely  less  precious  in  his  eyes  than  creeds  and  command- 
ments. His  face,  as  preserved  to  us  in  paintings  and  engrav- 
ings, has  in  it  the  lines  of  severity  and  obstinacy,  and  lacks 
the  indications  of  an  expansive  understanding ;  and  there  is 
in  the  correspondence  which  passed  between  him  and  Straf- 
ford an  ominous  repetition  of  a  sort  of  signal- word  which 
they  used,  i.  e.  Thorough.  When  such  a  man  stood  before 
Calvanists,  Presbyterians  and  Independents,  representing 
Ritualism,  Ecclesiasticism,  Armenianism,  and  even  strongly, 
however  unjustly  suspected  of  Romanism,  we  cannot  wonder 
at  the  virulence  with  which  they  pursued  him. 

It  is  idle,  however,  to  talk  of  them  as  the  champions  of  re- 
ligious liberty.  They  did  not  mean  liberty  for  any  but  them- 
selves. They  struggled  for  supremacy,  the  supremacy  of 
their1  own  system,  which  involved  the  casting  down  its  rival. 
To  accuse  Cromwell,  then,  of  hypocrisy  and  self-interested 
ends  in  the  battle  he  fought  for  the  Commonwealth  and  for 
Puritanism,  is  to  bring  a  charge  not  only  without  evidence, 
but  against  evidence.  When  this  capital  point  of  his  sinceri- 
ty has  been  settled,  there  is,  really,  very  little  room  left  for 
difference  of  opinion  as  to  his  character.  He  did  many  things 
that  cannot  be  successfully  defended,  but  nothing  that  was 
mean  or  base,  and  not  many,  probably,  that  his  own  con- 
science protested  against  at  the  time.  He  did  massacre  the 
English  refugees  and  the  native  Irish  at  Drogheda  and  at 
Wexford,  but  he  justified  these  acts  to  the  world  and  proba- 
bly to  himself,  on  the  ground  that  he  thereby  shortened  the 
war,  and  prevented  a  still  greater  effusion  of  blood.  He  did 
expel  the  native  Irish  from  their  possessions,  and  compel 
them  to  settle  in  a  narrow,  remote,  and  barren  part  of  the 
Island  in  Connaught ;  but  in  doing  this,  he  pursued  the  very 
policy  which  our  government  is  following  in  its  treatment  of 
the  Indians ;  and  his  estimate  of  the  wild  Irish  of  his  day, 
was  not  probably  very  different,  perhaps  scarce^  so  favorable, 
as  that  which  is  common  with  us  of  the  Indians.     He  did,  in 


26 

effect,  kill  the  king,  for  by  a  crook  of  liis  finger  he  could 
have  saved  his  life;  but  he  probably  justified  this,  not  only 
on  the  alleged  ground  of  the  king's  attempts  on  the  lives  and 
liberties  of  his  people,  but  still  more  on  the  consideration  that 
the  civil  war  would  never  cease  while  the  king  lived.  It  is 
certain,  that  on  the  whole,  he  did  not  shed  blood  wantonly 
or  wilfully.  He  saved  the  lives  of  many  royalists  who  were 
in  his  power ;  when  threatened  daily  with  assassination  him- 
self, he  would  permit  no  attempt  at  the  assassination  of  his 
enemies.  This  mercy  was,  ia  some  degree,  owing  to  his  re- 
markable fearlessness.  He  refused  his  consent  to  a  plan  to 
exterminate  the  Royalists,  Clarendon  says,  from  too  much 
contempt  of  them.  While  not  the  equal  of  Napoleon  in  bril- 
liancy and  grandeur  of  genius,  how  immeasurably  is  he  his 
superior  in  magnanimity !  Napoleon,  though  almost  canon- 
ized if  not  rather  deified  by  a  recent  American  writer,  can- 
not be  considered  a  magnanimous  man.  He  murdered — to 
use  the  truest  and  most  proper  word — he  murdered  the  Due 
D'Enghien,  from  the  fear  of  being  himself  assassinated — a 
fear  to  which  Alexander  showed  himself  so  superior,  when  he 
took  the  cup  from  the  hand  of  his  physician — a  fear  to  which 
Csesar  and  Cromwell  never  yielded,  though  encompassed  by 
far  more  real  danger.  Napoleon  caused  four  thousand  Turks 
who  surrendered  at  Jaffa  on  the  promise  that  their  lives 
should  be  spared,  to  be  shot  down  three  days  after  the  capitu- 
lation. The  massacre  at  Drogheda  is  the  darkest  stain  on  the 
memory  of  Cromwell  ;  but  how  excusable,  how  honorable  is 
it,  compared  with  them  assacre  at  Jaffa!  It  was  done  in  the 
heat  of  battle — no  promise  was  broken,  no  capitulation  vio- 
lated. The  next  day  after  the  storming  of  the  city  two  tow- 
ers were  taken,  from  one  of  which  some  of  his  men  had  been 
fired  at  and  killed,  when  it  was  certain  that  there  could  be 
no  effectual  resistance.  Under  these  circumstances  of  great 
provocation,  Cromwell  contented  himself  with  killing  the  of- 
ficers, decimating  the  men,  and  sending  the  survivors  to  be 
sold  at  Barbadoes.  All  these  were  acts  no  doubt  of  detesta- 
ble cruelty,  and  they  have  made  the  name  of  Cromwell  to  be 
a  curse  and  horror  to  the  present  day  in  Ireland.  But  they 
were  not  unprecedented  in  the  stern  trade  of  war.     A  man 


27 

taken  in  arms  having  just  tried  to  slay  his  conqueror,  is  un- 
derstood to  be  at  his  mercy.  If  he  is  spared,  the  greater  is 
the  glory  of  his  victor;  if  he  is  put  to  death,  he  pays  the  for- 
feit of  that  cruel  game  he  has  been  playing.  But  at  Jaffa, 
ISTapoleon  invades  a  country  which  had  been  at  peace  with 
his,  until  he  and  his  army  land  on  its  shore.  He  takes  a  city, 
whose  only  crime  is,  that  it  is  faithful  to  its  duty.  Four 
thousand  gallant  men  are  prepared  to  continue  their  defence. 
His  oavii  aid  and  stepson  promises  them  that  if  they  will  lay 
down  their  arms,  their  lives  shall  be  spared.  But  it  is  found 
that  this  will  not  be  convenient.  Food  is  scarce,  and  four 
thousand  additional  mouths  will  increase  that  scarcity.  If 
these  men  are  turned  loose,  they  may  join  his  enemies  still  in 
the  field.  For  two  days  the  matter  is  debated,  at  length  it  is 
determined  they  shall  all  be  shot.  They  were  marched  in 
chains  to  the  sea  shore,  and  divided  into  small  squares,  and 
mowed  down  by  successive  discharges  of  musketry.  For 
hours  this  was  continued,  and  they  who  survived  the-  shot 
were  despatched  with  the  bayonet.  And  yet  it  is  certain 
that  Xapoleon  did  not  love  bloodshed  for  its  own  sake ;  but 
he  was  supremely  selfish,  and  he  would  break  faith,  and 
would  trample  out  thousands  of  lives,  not  only  to  enhance 
his  glory,  in  which  he  was  like  the  other  heroes  in  history, 
but  to  save  himself  from  some  additional  cares  and  dangers, 
in  which,  to  the  honor  of  human  nature  be  it  said,  he  was 
not  like  them.  At  that  same  Jaffa,  (a  name  which  must  have 
rung  in  his  ears  whenever  he  thought  of  a  judgment  to  come,) 
at  that  same  Jaffa,  on  his  return  from  Acre,  where  he  had 
been  repulsed,  he  is  accused  of  having  poisoned  some  of  his 
3wn  soldiers,  to  save  them  indeed  from  the  cruelties  of  the 
Turks ;  and  in  his  conversations  at  St.  Helena,  without  ex- 
pressly admitting  the  fact,  he  justifies  it  on  the  ground  of 
mercy,  and  says  he  would  have  done  so  to  his  own  son.  But 
ivho,  it  may  be  asked,  brought  them  into  the  power  of  the 
Turks  ?  Who,  by  his  previous  massacre  of  his  prisoners,  had 
io  infuriated  the  Turks,  that  they  would  show  no  mercy? 
Dan  any  one  imagine  Cromwell  poisoning  his  Iron  Sides ;  or 
3i"esar,  pagan  as  he  was,  his  Tenth  Legion?  lie  withdrew 
rom  Egypt,  leaving  his  army  behind  him,  as  soon  as  it  be- 


28   • 

came  certain  that  the  expedition  must  ultimately  fail.  He 
left  his  perishing  squadrons  on  the  retreat  from  Russia,  har- 
rassed  by  the  enemy  and  sinking  under  the  cold,  and  himself 
hastened  back  to  Paris.  No  doubt  his  presence  was  required 
there,  but  was  it  not  doubly  required  in  the  midst  of  men 
whose  devotion  to  him  was  proving  their  ruin  and  their  death? 
In  entire  consistency  with  this,  he  was  the  first  man  to 
reach  Paris  with  authentic  accounts  of  his  disaster  at  "Water- 
loo. He  was  miles  from  the  field  of  battle,  when  his  Old 
Guard  made  the  last  effort  to  save  the  remnant  of  his  army. 
It  might  have  been  the  politic  course,  but  it  was  hardly  the 
magnanimous  one.  In  his  more  personal  and  private  rela- 
tions, he  cast  from  him  the  wife  of  his  youth  and  crushed  the 
heart  that  loved  him  best  on  earth,  to  help  forward  the  in- 
terests of  his  ill-starred  ambition.  Of  all  the  men  of  whom 
history  treats,  there  is  perhaps  no  one,  except  Lord  Bacon, 
who  exhibits  such  a  contrast  between  his  intellectual  gran- 
deur and  his  moral  littleness.  lie  was  far  from  being  the 
worst  of  men ;  and  he  certainly  was,  in  brilliancy  and  extent 
of  genius,  one  of  the  very  greatest :  and,  while  exhibiting  at 
Lodi  and  elsewhere,  when  he  considered  the  occasion  called 
for  it,  a  courage  worthy  of  the  army  he  led,  yet  was  he  too 
selfish  to  be  a  hero  of  the  first  rank,  even  when  measured  by 
an  entirely  worldly  standard.  He  could  do  kind  and  noble 
acts  in  the  happiest  manner,  and  accompanied  by  the  most 
striking  and  appropriate  language — for  no  one  could  make 
a  phrase  more  brilliant  than  he ;  but  it  is  difficult  to  point 
out  anything  of  this  sort  that  he  did,  that  cost  him  much. 
But,  whatever  his  other  faults  might  be,  no  one  can  bring 
charges  of  this  sort  against  Cromwell.  He  never  forsook  a 
friend,  still  less  a  whole  armj-  imperilled  in  his  cause.  He 
never  left  others  to  endure  sufferings  or  to  meet  dangers 
from  which  he  withdrew  himself.  He  was  no  doubt  ambi- 
tious ;  but  it  is  impossible  not  to  see  that  it  was  not  ambi- 
tion alone  or  principally  that  made  him  draw  his  sword  in 
civil  strife.  Higher  and  nobler  objects  than  anything  that 
centered  in  himself  alone,  were  in  his  mind's  eye.  He  fought 
for  the  liberty,  the  happiness,  and  the  glory  of  his  country, 
and  what  he  believed  to  be  the  truth  of  the  gospel  of  his  God. 


29 

No  doubt  lie  wished  to  be  tlie  foremost  man  in  England  ;  but 
much  more  did  he  wish  England  to  be  the  foremost  nation  of 
the  earth.  On  reading  to  his  council  a  letter  of  Blake's,  re- 
lating to  the  high  manner  in  which  the  admiral  had  interpos- 
ed at  Malaga  to  protect  some  Englishmen  and  to  punish  their 
assailants,  Cromwell  expressed  the  utmost  approbation,  and 
declared  that  by  such  means  they  would  make  the  name  of 
Englishman  as  great  as  that  of  Roman  was  in  Rome's  most 
palmy  days.  But  he  felt  an  influence  still  more  elevating, 
and  still  more  helpful  to  produce  that  self-forgetfulness  in 
which  magnanimity  essentially  consists.  It  was  his  religious 
fervor.  I  am  not  now  inquiring  into  the  purity  or  the  com- 
pleteness of  his  creed.  No  doubt  in  both  respects  it  was  faul- 
ty, but  such  as  it  was  he  believed  it  firmly.  It  was  mainly  in 
this  respect  that  he  was  the  superior  of  Csesar  and  Napoleon. 
It  was  the  unhappy  destiny  of  these  two  men  to  belong  to  a 
very  irreligious  age.  They  were  born  into  a  moral  atmos- 
phere that  was  like  the  air  of  a  room  that  has  lost  its  oxygen 
— such  as  the  Black  Hole  of  Calcutta — and  their  whole  moral 
nature  was  paralyzed  by  it.  Cresar  lived  when  Paganism 
had  become  a  laughingstock  even  to  Pagans,  and  he  seems  to 
have  had  as  little  sense  'of  religion  as  could  be  found  in  a 
man  of  such  genius  and  general  sensibility.  He  had,  conse- 
quently, little  or  no  moral  principle.  He  did  right  some- 
times, and  splendidly  right,  not  because  he  felt  it  an  obliga- 
tion, but  because  it  was  the  impulse  of  his  own  noble  nature. 
Napoleon  reached  manhood  surrounded  by  those  influences 
which  culminated  in  the  decrees  of  the  French  Convention, 
which  pronounced  the  throne  of  heaven  vacant,  death  an 
eternal  sleep,  and  man,  by  consequence,  to  be  only  a  superi- 
or  sort  of  beast.  Religion-  was  to  him,  during  the  busy  part 
of  life,  only  a  political  engine,  by  which  he  worked  on  the 
feelings  and  purposes  of  men.  He  professed  in  Egypt  to  be 
a  Mussulman,  in  the  same  spirit  of  calculation  with  which  he 
afterwards  made  a  concordat  with  the  Pope.  In  the  com- 
parative solitude  and  retirement  of  St.  Helena,  when  life  was 
waning  away,  his  mind  received  a  sounder  and  more  health- 
ful tone ;  and  in  his  last  days,  the  sacraments  of  the  Romish 
church  were  administered  to  him  at  his  own  request:  but 


30 

even  then,  lie  asked  for  them  in  an  apologetical  manner,  and 
as  if  conscious  that  he  lowered  his  position  thereby.  But 
with  Cromwell,  religion  was  a  great  reality.  It  was  the  high- 
est, the  eternal  relation  of  things.  To  be  ashamed  of  it,  was 
more  foolish  than  to  be  ashamed  of  living  Or  thinking.  To 
him,  God  was  an  ever-present  being.  His  providence  it  was 
that  watched  over  him ;  His  decree  the  effectual  cause  of  his 
victories.  His  conduct,  to  be  sure,  did  not  always  corres- 
pond with  these  sentiments ;  and  when  surrounded  by  the 
splendor  of  a  court,  and  living  in  unaccustomed  luxury,  he 
relaxed,  it  is  to  be  feared,  very  much  from  that  strictness  of 
morals,  which  had  characterized  the  devout  farmer  of  Hunt- 
ingdon. That  jealousy,  by  which  his  wife  was  tormented  af- 
ter he  became  Protector,  seems  to  have  been  not  without 
cause.  And  he  must  have  felt  that  he  had  been  guilty  of 
many  acts  of  military  severity,  of  political  intrigue,'  and  of 
personal  duplicity,  which  were  wide  deviations  from  that 
path  of  symplicity,  sincerity,  mercy  and  love  in  which  his 
God  had  commanded  him  to  walk.  Cromwell,  then,  must  be 
pronounced  a  hypocrite,  if  by  hypocrisy  is  meant  not  act- 
ing up  to  a  man's  principles ;  but  alas !  who  could  abide  thafe 
test  ?  In  that  point  of  view,  looking  at  poor  humanity,  we 
must  say  with  the  Psalmist  in  his  haste,  "All  men  are  liars." 
But  it  may  be  said,  that  all  religious  men  do  not  err  to  the 
extent  and  in  the  manner  in  which  he  erred.  This  is  also 
true ;  but  it  must  be  likewise  remembered,  that  very  few 
have  been  tempted  as  he  was.  He  was  no  hypocrite  in  the 
sense  of  professing  a  faith  he  did  not  feel.  He  believed  in 
the  reality  and  necessity  of  divine  grace,  and  that  he  had 
himself  experienced  it ;  and  this  conviction  he  carried  with 
him  as  a  talisman  in  all  the  perils  of  his  subsequent  course. 
And  what  thoughts  does  this  imply  of  God,  of  a  judgment, 
of  the  worth  of  the  soul,  of  the  effectual  mediation  of  Christ ! 
How  often  must  such  thoughts  have  calmed  and  restrained 
that  wild,  great,  vehement  spirit,  when  its  own  tempestuous 
energies  might  have  hurried  it  into  deeper  guilt  than  that  by 
which  it  was  actually  stained !  "What  a  safeguard  then  did 
he  possess,  as  well  as  what  a  source  of  grandeur  of  thought 
and  feeling  of  which  Cseasar  and  Napoleon  were  bereft,  by 


31 

the  unhappy  scepticism  of  their  respective  eras,  in  which 
they  themselves  participated.  In  the  last  period  of  life,  by 
the  mercy  of  God,  occasion  was  given  him  to  cherish  these 
deep-rooted  religions  feelings,  which  had  so  often  been  smoth- 
ered and  suppressed  during  his  busy  and  eventful  life,  by  the 
necessities,  combinations  and  passions  of  the  world — and 
grace,  we  may  trust,  was  given  him  to  improve  the  occasion. 
I  have  already  spoken  of  the  strength  and  vehemence  of 
his  paternal  affection ;  of  all  his  children,  Elizabeth,  Lady 
Claypoler,  was  the  best  beloved,  and  most  attractive.  She 
was,  says  Guizot,  a  person  of  noble  and  delicate  sentiments, 
of  an  elegant  and  cultivated  mind,  faithful  to  her  friends, 
generous  to  her  enemies,  and  tenderly  attached  to  her  father, 
of  whom  she  felt  at  once  proud  and  anxious,  and  who  rejoiced 
greatly  in  her  affection.  When  fatigued,  as  he  often  was, 
not  only  by  the  men  who  surrounded,  him,,  but  by  his  own 
agitated  thoughts,  Cromwell  took  pleasure  in  seeking  repose 
in  the  society  of  a  person  so  entirely  a  stranger  to  the  brutal 
conflicts  and  violent  actions  which  had  occupied,  and  still 
continued  to  occupy  his  life.  She  had  for  some  time  been  an 
invalid,  and  in  the  summer  of  1G58  he  sent  her  to  Hampton 
court,  that  she  might  have  the  benefit  of  country  air  and 
complete  tranquility.  Finding  her  illness  increase,  he  went 
to  reside  there  himself,  that  he  might  watch  over  her  with 
tender  and  constant  care.  Sitting  by  her  side,  he  heard  her 
give  utterance,  during  attacks  of  delirium,  sometimes  to  her 
own  cruel  sufferings,  and  sometimes  to  her  grief  and  pious 
anxiety  concerning  himself.  On  the  6th  of  August  she  died, 
on  the  24:th  he  was  himself  ill ;  then,  as  he  advanced  nearer 
to  the  grave,  wordly  thoughts  and  cares  retreated  and  disap- 
peared, and  the  dread  interests  of  eternity  occupied  his  soul. 
He  summoned  the  ministers  of  religion  and  other  pious 
friends,  who  made  earnest  intercession  that  his  life  might  be 
spared.  His  own  prayers  ascended  with  theirs,  and  the  day 
before  his  death  he  was  heard  to  say,  "  Lord,  though  I  am  a 
miserable  and  wretched  creature,  I  am  in  covenant  with  Thee 
through  grace,  and  I  may,  I  will  come  to  Thee  for  Thy  people. 
Thou  hast  made  me,  though  very  unworthy,  a  mean  instru- 
ment to  do  them  some  good  and  Thee  service,  and  many  of 


32 

them  have  set  too  high  a  value  upon  me,  though  others  wish, 
and  would  be  glad  of  my  death ;  but  Lord,  however  Thou 
dispose  of  me,  continue  and  go  on  to  do  good  for  them.  Give 
them  consistency  of  judgment,  one  heart,  and  mutual  love ; 
and  go  on  to  deliver  them,  and  with  them  the  work  of  refor- 
mation, and  make  the  name  of  Christ  glorious  in  the  world. 
Teach  those  who  look  too  much  on  Thy  instruments,  to  de- 
pend more  upon  Thyself.  Pardon  such  as  desire  to  trample 
upon  the  dust  of  a  poor  worm,  for  they  are  Thy  people  too, 
and  pardon  the  folly  of  this  short  prayer,  even  for  Jesus 
Christ's  sake.  Amen."  Again  during  the  night,  he  was 
heard  muttering  to  himself,  "  Truly  God  is  good,  indeed  He 
is.  He  will  not  leave  me."  In  this  spirit  of  humility,  of 
charity  toward  his  enemies,  of  zeal  for  God's  cause,  of  trust 
in  His  mercy,  the  great  soul  of  Oliver  Cromwell  passed 
away.    May  we  not  hope  to  peace  ? 


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